Spider-Man (1981) Episode Ten: Revenge of the Green Goblin

Revenge of the Green Goblin

First Aired: November 14th, 1981

Synopsis: Norman Osborn is in a devastating train crash, but after emerging from the wreck, has a grin on his face. A bit later, Peter Parker and Betty Brant are at a university Halloween party, when Peter's spider-sense tingles. He goes to the science lab, where he finds the Green Goblin, who activates a freeze ray which prevents him from moving. The Goblin reveals that he's here since he had a hidden costume here, and then uses a device to project his thoughts and show his origin and some previous fights Spider-Man and he had, including their final one, where he lost his memory. He reveals that the train crash from the start of the episode restored his memory, including that of Spider-Man's real identity: Peter Parker.

The Goblin leaves a maskless, frozen Peter Parker to be found by Betty when she's heard coming, but Peter is able to break the effects of the freeze ray and change his costume in time. The Green Goblin, meanwhile, sprays the newspaper presses at the Daily Bugle with a mysterious green gas as revenge for J. Jonah Jameson writing editorials about how dangerous his factories are. Spider-Man and the Goblin have another fight that night, but the next day, when Peter gets his morning paper, it collapses into green powder. Heading to the Daily Bugle, he finds the Goblin taunting Jonah before capturing him. Although Jonah is saved by Spider-Man, the Goblin has revealed that he knows Spider-Man's identity, which Jonah is now eager to learn. However, as the Goblin tries to get it out, he doesn't pay attention to where he's going and flies his glider into a petrol tanker, exploding it and wiping his memory of being the Goblin. When J. Jonah Jameson asks the now normal Norman Osborn who Spider-Man is, the confused Norman tells him: by pointing at the still costumed Spider-Man on a wall.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The Green Goblin projecting his thoughts to a helpless Spider-Man is very Amazing Spider-Man #40. The flashback we see of him losing his memory definitely draws from that issue, too.
• The Green Goblin explicitly mentions that he has super strength when talking about the accident which gave him his powers. I'm about 95% sure that in the comics at this point, it hadn't been established yet that the Goblin had super strength.
• Although Norman Osborn knows Spider-Man's secret identity of Peter Parker, there's no mention of whether or not Peter has any relationship with his son, Harry. In fact, there's no mention of Harry in the episode at all.
• When Peter changes to Spider-Man, his mask is depicted more as a sort of hood which he pulls on from back over his head. I'm pretty sure that it's never been that way before (and probably never since).
• As mentioned above, the episode features a Halloween party. The episode first aired two weeks after Halloween - I wonder whether there were intentions to initially show it closer to the date but there were delays in getting it out.

Review: As much as I love the 1967 cartoon's interpretation of the Green Goblin, I have to say: this is the sort of Green Goblin that is just about perfect. He's ruthless, he's pragmatic, he's insane, and he's got a personal connection to Peter that few of his other villains do. I also absolutely love the way he gets a connection to Jonah in this episode in a natural way - I can absolutely picture Norman Osborn having unsafe factories, and I can also picture Jonah going on a legitimately well-intentioned crusade against such a thing.

Aside from some legitimately good drama and action, the episode also manages to pull in just the right about of humour to help the episode but not so much to make it goofy. By far the highlight of the episode - probably one of the best moments this season, even - is J. Jonah Jameson shouting up to the Green Goblin, a villain who only moments ago captured him and ruined that day's newspapers, to ask him for Spider-Man's secret identity, while Spider-Man smashes bin lids together and makes a lot of noise to drown out the Goblin. Again, this is behaviour I could picture all of them getting into, and it's absolutely hilarious.

So overall, this is an absolutely fantastic episode. If it weren't for the discrepancies between the contemporary comics and this episode (Peter dating Betty, the Green Goblin being alive) I could see it making for an absolutely fantastic contemporary issue - there's not really anything it gets that wrong, and there's plenty it gets right. Easily the best episode of this series so far, and definitely one of, if not the best, episode I've seen since I started this blog.